CharonY

As usual, do not take medical advice on fora seriously. Well, microscopic observations are somewhat dependent on experience. Gram generally stains Gram+ bacteria and fungi but from size alone they should be easily distinguishable. Anything more detailed than that can be tricky. That being said, if the sample was well prepared, PCR is way more sensitive, and should at least taken into consideration for the analysis (but sampling procedure is important). It is probably a good idea to get some second opinions.

Ah yes, the giant viruse thingy. Excitement has died down a little bit. But to me the whole thing was more like PR thingy to garner more excitement. Personally I still consider them to be not alive but being mobile genetic elements, as they are basically replicators and have no metabolic activities to speak of. The fact that other virus can affect it, does not give much reason to reconsider this. Using a similiar logic you could call plasmids to be alive, as their structure can be altered by a number of other mobile elements, such as transposons and integrons. What I do agree with, is that the boundary is artificial to begin with. However, this distinction can be quite useful in discussing certain things. Keeping things alive is a good example, as it generally implies that one has to cater for certain residual metabolic activities (especially during resuscitation) whereas in the other case we would be thinking more in terms of structural integrity. But obviously their are always borderline examples that defy it.

There are several issues and depends on what kind of results you need (i.e. the actual analytical application) as well as the nature of the sample. As you already mentioned, contamination (not only proteins, but everything else that absorbs at near UV) will confound results. The less purified your sample, the larger the error. Especially if separation is not ideal beforehand, this is a big issue. The next is sensitivity. Depending on the aromatic components of your protein, it will absorb more or less. In some cases, where you only got minute amounts, it will be below detection limit. As a general rule of thumb, protein quantification via UV/Vis is quite ok, if you are within the dynamic range of the assay, and have a very pure sample (including buffer/solvents). For other things, colorimetric assays often have better sensitivity and/or robustness, or even MS (which requires a bit more work).

Just as a sidenote, none of the responses on this (or any other public forum for that matter) are "official" in any way. Some responses are extrapolations of existing knowledge, some may come from experience. That being said, major degradation effects are, as already mentioned, due to light, temperature, humidity and oxidation, depending on the composition. One good way to store is using a desiccator (essentially a jar that has a sorbent material such as silica, and flush it with an inert gas, such as nitrogen. PET such as mylar are decent gas and water permeability barriers, but you should be aware that a bit is still leaking through. They are for instance not suitable where you truly need anoxic conditions. Over years stuff is bound to happen.

Technically, horizontal gene transfer is uncoupled from reproduction and is therefore not a replacement. Before the rise of sexual reproduction, the mechanisms for the transfer of genetic information between different individuals and reproduction were quite independent of each other.

Hmmm. In both cases you get issued underwear?

Just by looking at colonies (without use of selective and/or indicator agar) it is generally not possible to reliably identify bacteria. TA is pretty much non-selective (though not super-rich, either). Random guesses would probably include Pseudomonas and corynebacteria, as you can find them pretty much everywhere.

There is no fixed form to which you have to adhere. I would put research higher up and without details I do know how related experience would differ from related skills. Another thing to remember is to keep it short and concise. Few like to read through a lot of fluff.

The form of the CV tends to be more dependent on what you apply for (industrial, academic, type of position), rather than the field. That being said, for PhD applications standard material are: - a cover letter stating your interests and why you are a good fit; do not repeat CV here, but rather give your profile another dimension - CV in a in tabular form, highlighting education (on that level attended courses and grades are often shown), lab experience (i.e. undergrad research), teaching experience (e.g. as TA). To be honest, most applications at that level look very similar, so it is somewhat important to have a cover letter that is well-written.

Actually re-reading the question I have to say that I am not sure what the question really is. It is not clear to me, for instance, what precisely should be unique. Unique for an individual (i.e. a specific genome), unique for a genomic region or unique for a gene. My initial assumption was that the question aimed at looking at a stretch that would uniquely hybridize to a given 25 kb region. But that may very well not be the case.

Half man half hobbit?

The question is completely unrelated to genes (not all sequences on the DNA are coding for genes). Instead, it asks how long does a sequence has to be, in order to be unique for a 25 kb region. The exponent is derived from the fact that each position can have on of four bases (ACGT). Now, if your sequence has only one base, you will find that at each position of the 25 kb stretch you have a 1/4 chance of having this particular base. Obviously, this is not unique at all. So how long does it has to be? Also moved to homework.

I do not know who the people are that you are referring to. However, based on what you said I would not accept nutritional or even medical advice from them.

Typically volume down to a ml are done with volumetric flasks (i.e. rinse the whole sample into it with appropriate buffer, then fill up to the mark). For smaller volumes often pipettors are used (which can be a bit tricky). That is why often stock solutions with somewhat higher volumes (i.e. at least an ml) are generally used and then diluted using pipettors.

Normally the final volume is used.

The actual fermentation pathway to ethanol using sugars as starting material does not yield methanol. So there is no equilibrium reaction between those two constituents. However, during fermentation of beverages the starting material is more complicated (e.g. grapes for wine). Methanol can then be released during the breakdown mostly from pectin, I think. During pectin degradation a methyl residue is removed from a methylesterified galacturonosyl yielding methanol and a homogalacturonan, I think. So again, it is mostly decoupled from the ethanol fermentation pathway. However, many plants (especially the fruit) for fermentation are not terribly high in pectin and for wine I found concentrations between 0.1-0.2 g/L (or 0.01-0.02 % w/v).

Well actually both were MDs and switched to biochemistry from there... Also, there is no pure bio Nobel (medicine and physiology is a bit more specialized).

Since when is he a scientist? As far as I can see he got an MD and was working as practitioner.

Indeed. Different organs have different turnover rates with the brain having one of the somewhat lower ones, but development is ongoing.

Actually serotonin levels affect wakefulness. I.e. high levels of serotonin inhibit REM sleep. Edit to add that that it may not be strictly true as the pathways are somewhat complicated and under certain conditions this does not hold to be true.

I think this can be merged with http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/69616-evolution-is-a-lie-from-hell-republican-rep-paul-broun/

Well technically it will work on all serine proteases by esterification. However the issues with PMSF tends to be its stability/solubility in aqueous, high-salt and/or high pH solutions. Personally I prefer some of the newer cocktails as they give more consistent results. That being said, plasmin required relatively high amounts to be deactivated, IIRC, and together with low solubility/stability of PMSF could be an issue.

I am not sure whether you are referring to evolution as the process itself or the theoretical background explaining it. Modern synthesis (or Darwinism for that matter) refers to the latter. The conditions under which evolution occurs are pretty straightforward, actually. Predictive statements are the complicated part. Considering that evolution is a high level mechanism I do not see that it has to be an accepted premise of any sort. If you have a situation that does not conform to the H-W equilibrium evolution is pretty much an unavoidable consequence. There is not need to believe in that. If I use the term as proposed by Ophiolite it would be correct to state that Darwinism describes the processes of evolution, pretty much the same way that Newtonian mechanics describe the movement of objects under the influence of forces. I doubt you would describe classical mechanics as the belief that an object dropped on earth will fall towards the ground, for example.

Good points. Also it should be added that the whatever one proposes should advance the knowledge in the field to some extent and also provide data. For instance and alternative interpretation of existing data may be nice, but if there is no data to support it, it is only one of gazillion ideas that are thrown around and never followed-up in the lab. It is different if a problem has been well-recognized as such and the theory could provide testable hypotheses to solve the issue.

I would eliminate belief from that statement as it implies a meta-view on the process. Whatever we call it (either Darwinism, new synthesis, Mocklefrock) describes the evolutionary process (to the extent we understand it) and forms the theoretical framework for its study. The description of the mechanisms are implicit to that. Based on that the addition of "ongoing" is also unnecessary as the framework would define under which conditions evolution would be ongoing or not (such as under H-W equilibria).